Sonny
The story begins with a cutscene where Sonny explains that he has died on the White November and has somehow been brought back to life as a zombie by Louis the Blind. However, he suffers from major amnesia, having forgotten everything before his "death". Louis calls him Sonny and the two of them try to find a way off the ship. He teaches Sonny how to defend himself and advises him on what to do to survive on the battlefield. After Sonny has fought through several Metabiis and zombies, they meet a ZPCI team, sent to exterminate everyone on board the ship because of the research that they had been doing. Louis is shot and lies bleeding on the ground. They attack Sonny, yet he destroys them, and another cutscene plays as Louis dies in Sonny's arms. As Louis dies, he gives Sonny a tape saying: "It's a tape. Maybe it can help you." Sonny escapes the ship via a motor boat and arrives at a haunted beach, known as Ishiguro's Rest. There, Sonny confronts more ZPCI Soldiers, frost zombies, ghost samurai and ghost assassins. On the way, he meets his first partner Veradux, who is a combat medic and also a zombie, who helps him to fight against some ZPCI soldiers. The two of them fight their way through more samurai, assassins and ZPCI hunters to the end of the beach, where they encounter and slay Sensei Ishiguro. Once they get off the beach, they must cross Gadi'Kala, the Great Plains, a wide, flat expanse surrounded by mountains. Living in the area are various tribes, but by far the most dominant and hostile in the region is that of the Shamans. Once Sonny and Veradux have destroyed the Shaman tribe, they begin encountering zombie-like creatures known as devourers. Whenever they fight them, their heads start hurting, especially Sonny's. Veradux concludes that someone is playing with their minds. They also run into more ZPCI soldiers, but it is clear that they are not on the same side as the devourers as the ZPCI are also killing them. Sonny and Veradux fight on, their heads hurting more and more. They kill a unit of ZPCI that were talking about going to help Galient the Paladin kill the Baron; they meet the Paladin shortly afterwards, who is just about to attack Baron Brixius. Baron Brixius is an extremely powerful zombie overlord. He uses mind control to bring other zombies under his control, then uses them to further his own ends. Sonny and Veradux' heads had been hurting because of the influence of the Baron, whose servants were the devourers. They had presumably resisted thus far because of their unusual intelligence and willpower among zombies. Posing as the reinforcements that the Paladin was expecting, Sonny and Veradux join him in his attempt to take down the Baron. However, after slaying the Baron, the two heroes turn on the Paladin and cut him down as well. Later Sonny wakes up from a dream. It has been a month since they defeated the Paladin. He and Veradux are camping around a fire, and start to discuss the tape given to Sonny by Louis the Blind in the previous game. Though they have traveled a long way, Sonny still has not found a way to play the tape. Soon, a mysterious zombie named Felicity arrives on a motorcycle, snatches the tape from Sonny and stabs Veradux in the face. Sonny and Veradux chase her to New Alcatraz prison. They fight off many guards and human experiments, formerly the prisoners. They also re-encounter soldiers from the ZPCI. When the two finally track down Felicity, they find her trying to escape in a car. Veradux shuts down the car's battery with an electro-bolt, and Sonny asks Felicity what's so valuable about the tape. She replies, "It's the key to... Utopia." A battle ensues, and once they have defeated Felicity, she throws them a tape (be it the real one or a replacement) and makes her escape on foot, stabbing Veradux in the face again as she leaves. They play the tape in her car's tape player. Anticlimactically, however, it just plays the song: "You Are My Sunshine." They remember Felicity mentioning a Utopia, and finding a map in the car, start to drive there. The car soon breaks down, however, as Veradux's Electro Bolt had permanently damaged the car's battery. They stop at the village Oberursel, which is covered in snow and ice. Within the village there are two main factions:a cult that practices human sacrifice and a group of insurgents. The village is also infested with zombies and other ice monsters. Sonny and Veradux are soon attacked by a couple of insurgents who mistake them for common zombies. However, they soon realize their mistake and one of them, Roald, makes a deal with them. He enlists Sonny's help in overthrowing the cult in the village in return for Roald taking them to the Utopia. Roald joins Sonny and together they fight through zombies, frost monsters and the Knights, Mages and Priests that made up the cult's fighting force. They eventually encounter the cult leader, and immediately attack him. However, during the battle, Sonny's head starts to hurt, the same way it did on the Great Plains in the previous game. As the battle draws to a close, the Cult Leader suddenly transforms into his true form, that of Baron Brixius, whom they met and fought in the previous game. The Baron reveals that he started the cult, apparently mostly for fun. it is likely that he had engineered all the conflict within the village, driving the cultists to destroy the insurgents while at the same time controlling the zombies within the area to attack both the insurgents and the cultists. Sonny, Veradux and Roald defeat him for a second time, and the cultists, seeing their master in his true form, are disillusioned and the cult disintegrates. The next cutscene shows several ZPCI helicopters flying in on the village. Gunshots are heard in the background, and the cutscene ends with the screen turning off. Sonny and company are attacked by a ZPCI Elite and two armored hounds. After defeating them, they run into the leader of the operation, Captain Hunt, and his entourage, a sniper and a medic. They kill the sniper and the medic and, leaving Captain Hunt lying wounded on the ground, escape the village by train. As they leave, they hear Hunt ordering his men to follow them. As they escape by train on the Ivory Line, they realize that the train does not have enough fuel to last the whole trip. Therefore they decide to go to the back of the train for more coal. On the way they meet a collector named Ed Spencer, who offers to sell his goods to them, advising them not to go into the other carriages as Clemons the Deceiver had been through there. They go anyway, and are forced to fight through ZPCI, hobos, spectres and other monstrosities to get to the back of the train. In the last carriage, they meet Clemons the Deceiver, a former magician skilled in illusionary magic. He has now, however, gone insane, and proceeds to attack the party. They defeat him, but the train soon crashes in the Tunnel of Illusions due to the fact that no-one was actually driving it. The Tunnel of Illusions, Labyrinth, is a network of tunnels near the city of Hew. The Ivory Line runs through it to Hew, which Sonny must follow to get there. The tunnels are filled with green slime and a strange form of gas, the nature of which is unknown but causes decreased brain activity, increased levels of dopamine, severe hallucinations and ultimately death. Some sort of substance in the tunnels also seems to cause powerful mutations in some lifeforms, creating a vast array of extremely strange creatures that inhabit the Labyrinth. Sonny, Veradux and Roald fight through many of these creatures until they reach the end of the tunnel. There they encounter another mutation, the Hydra. It is unclear whether it is made up of several different creatures, or if it is the one creature with the rest of its body trapped underground with just the three heads sticking out. They slay it, and are soon met by some tunnel workers from Hew. The workers give them gas masks, saying that if they breathe in any more of the gas they would most likely die. As they rest in a nearby building, the workers hold a meeting in an adjacent room. They start to argue, saying that the taxes they pay are extremely high due to the ZPCI's protection fees, which they do not believe they even need to pay anymore as they have not seen any zombies in a long time. Suddenly, a bloody body comes crashing through the skylight and onto the table. One of the workers identifies him as his brother, and in their rebellious state of mind the workers blame his death on the ZPCI. A dark figure (the same shape as Felicity) appears in the skylight before leaving quickly, though no one sees her. The workers, in a frenzy, start chanting "Down with the Mayor!" (Boris Livingstone). A group of police walk in on them and order them to return to their homes. It is around this point that a revolt is set fully in motion, and mobs of workers start marching towards the Mayor's office. Sonny, Veradux, and Roald join the revolt and fight their way through various soldiers attempting to police the streets. Along the way, they meet Felicity again. She expresses her desire to join them, as she has he own reasons for wanting the Mayor deposed. Sonny and Felicity soon encounter the mayor across a wide fissure in the ground, which prevents them from attacking him. They do, however, overhear a ZPCI ambassador telling the Mayor that plans are already in motion to subdue the masses once again. The Mayor then sees Felicity and exclaims that he thought she was dead. He implores the ambassador to protect him from her before departing. Sonny, Felicity, Roald, and Veradux continue their push to the Mayor's office, slaughtering everyone who stand in their way, including the town council. The ZPCI, however, are not seen: they had apparently decided not to get involved just yet, leaving Hew to its own devices. When they reach the Mayor's office, they find him ready for battle. After defeating him, some of the rest of the workers catch up. As Sonny wipes the slime from himself from the tunnel of illusions, the workers see that he is not, as they had thought, a man covered in slime, but rather a zombie covered in slime. Some show hostility and mistrust, but are soon convinced by the others to accept Sonny, based on the fact that he helped them to overthrow the Mayor. In the aftermath, Felicity explains the situation with the ZPCI. They are an organization devoted to protecting the general population from zombies - sometimes defensively, sometimes aggressively. However, threats to their organization's well-being began to arise in the form of scientists attempting to find a cure for zombification, the success of which would render the ZPCI useless as a service. Therefore, they destroyed such groups of scientists undercover wherever they found them, shutting down their operations and killing everyone involved. Though they are elated after their victory, Roald reminds them of the ambassador's words earlier, and remarks that the ZPCI probably have a plan to put down the rebellion. Sonny decides to track down the ambassador in order to find out more information. The final scene shows a conference of five high-level ZPCI officials, deciding what to do about the revolt. One suggests calling down a nuclear strike, but this is rejected by the leader. He states that they will be using "the seed", which is met by general gasps of shock and fear.